# Evidence for the resurrection **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 13, 2006, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594 "2006-05-13T03:25:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![spazattak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@spazattak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spazattak)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/101 "2006-05-15T16:37:46Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > Not true. You have the martyrdom of the Apostles, for example, as recorded by the historian Eusebius. Eusebius had an exceptional track record for accuracy, and according to a historian professor that I know, he pretty much fathered the concept of copious footnoting in historical documentation. He was also deeply persecuted for his beliefs, was imprisoned, and came close to being martyred for them. (His mentor was indeed killed for such beliefs.) Considering Eusebius wasn’t even _born_ until 200 years after they were all dead, it doesn’t even constitute proof of their existence, much less proof that they where even executed or that there might have been a resurection. If he was so copius about footnoting why don’t we have any primary sources about Jesus or his disciples? How about alteast a _name_ of a primary source? Where these particular events even foot-noted? ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/102 "2006-05-15T16:43:44Z")
I own a copy of N.T. Wright’s book The Resurrection of the Son of God. I’ve dropped in here to add, maybe too late, my take on what he set out to do in this book. First, he is an Anglican bishop and a biblical scholar. The book is scholarly in form and tone; I have a decent vocabulary but needed my dictionary close at hand to make sense of the book. One of his goals is to refute suggestions that the gospels describe something other than a dead body coming back to life. He goes to great lengths and depths to demonstrate what was believed by Jews at that time about death, life after death and the possibility of reversing death. He then attempts to prove that witnesses at the time believed that Christ had truly died and truly risen from the dead in corporeal form. Essential to his argument is the belief that witnesses to these events were also witnesses to the oral tradition and the gospels describing the events. It is the basic argument that says that the gospels would have been refuted by eyewitnesses had they been false. Obviously, if the dating of the gospels is as stated by DtC and others, that argument doesn’t do much. I read the book a year or so ago, and I don’t have my copy with me, but I don’t recall him actually trying to scientifically or legally prove that these events happened. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/103 "2006-05-16T01:43:25Z")
> [@JThunder](#): > > As the Apostle Paul himself said, “And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” Paul himself pointed to the Resurrection as the reason for people to believe. Again, you are being quite naive. First, Paul never knew Jesus or any of the alleged “Apostles” (i.e., the “twelve” that the Gospels speak of). Furthermore, Paul **explicitly repudiated** the idea that he had earthly evidence of Jesus’ existence (Galatians 1:11-12, NLT): > [@](#): > > Dear brothers and sisters, I solemnly assure you that the Good News of salvation which I preach is not based on mere human reasoning or logic. For my message came by a direct revelation from Jesus Christ himself. No one else taught me. He not only states, he _demands_ that he never learned about any alleged “Jesus” or alleged resurrection or anything else from anyone on earth. He insists that all of his beliefs about Jesus came from visions, which simply cannot be considered genuine evidence, let alone historical evidence. Paul’s statement you quoted above is nothing but a theological construction based solely on his spiritual beliefs, allegedly imparted only in a “vision”, and in no way represents evidence of any historical resurrection (or, for that matter, any belief by Paul in a historical, earthly resurrection). > [@JThunder](#): > > The explosive growth of early Christianity _despite intense Roman persecution_, suggests that something happened to trigger that growth. This does not automatically prove that the Resurrection occurred, but it’s a piece of evidence that must be considered, evaluated and explained. Nonsense. Consider, for just one example, the explosive growth of the early Mormon church. They grew so incredibly rapidly and successfully in large measure precisely _because_ their beliefs (at least their early beliefs) were so radically outrageous that they were bitterly persecuted (sorry, Mormons; I’m not trying to bait you here). All we can say is that being persecuted leads to social forces that often produce rapid growth. We **certainly** cannot say that the factors leading to such growth provide “evidence” of _anything_. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/104 "2006-05-16T02:24:25Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > Again, you are being quite naive. First, Paul never knew Jesus or any of the alleged “Apostles” (i.e., the “twelve” that the Gospels speak of). Furthermore, Paul **explicitly repudiated** the idea that he had earthly evidence of Jesus’ existence (Galatians 1:11-12, NLT): He not only states, he _demands_ that he never learned about any alleged “Jesus” or alleged resurrection or anything else from anyone on earth. He insists that all of his beliefs about Jesus came from visions, which simply cannot be considered genuine evidence, let alone historical evidence. > > Paul’s statement you quoted above is nothing but a theological construction based solely on his spiritual beliefs, allegedly imparted only in a “vision”, and in no way represents evidence of any historical resurrection (or, for that matter, any belief by Paul in a historical, earthly resurrection). > > Nonsense. Consider, for just one example, the explosive growth of the early Mormon church. They grew so incredibly rapidly and successfully in large measure precisely _because_ their beliefs (at least their early beliefs) were so radically outrageous that they were bitterly persecuted (sorry, Mormons; I’m not trying to bait you here). All we can say is that being persecuted leads to social forces that often produce rapid growth. We **certainly** cannot say that the factors leading to such growth provide “evidence” of _anything_. So you cite Galatians 1 as your authority that Paul had no knowledge of Jesus’s earthly existence or resurrection, but a purely visionary experience, and yet you deny that Paul knew any of the Apostles, in spite of his claim that he did indeed meet with Peter/Cephas in that very same passage (v 18)? Paul did not “ **explicitly repudiated** the idea that he had earthly evidence of Jesus’ existence” - he only stated that he did not receive his teaching in the Gospel from anyone but the Risen Christ. Not that he had no knowledge of a historical Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/105 "2006-05-16T02:30:42Z")
> [@Lissa](#): > > As a historian, I conclude from the evidence that there was a man named Jesus who called himself the Christ, and managed to gather a following in his lifetime which expanded after his death. There’s evidence for that, but not much else. We are close to agreement in general, but I must say that it seems to me you might not be familiar with the latest and closest scholarship in this area. Since you are a scholar yourself, I would think you would be quite interested in reading what one of the finest and most eminent religious scholars, Burton Mack, has to say concerning the alleged evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus. This is an extended quotation from his recent book: _Who Wrote the New Testament? : The Making of the Christian Myth_ > [@](#): > > _ **At the End of the Quest** _ > > I want now to offer four criticisms of the quest for the historical Jesus, especially as it has been pursued in recent American scholarship, and then suggest a better approach to the examination of Christian beginnings. > > (1) A first criticism is that the quest has not produced any agreement about a textual data base from which to work. The textual units used for this or that profile change from scholar to scholar without any agreed-upon theoretical framework to adjudicate the differences among them. This is a serious indictment of the guild of New Testament scholarship. The guild pretends to be an academic discipline, but in fact resists the pursuit of a theoretical framework and the accompanying rules of argumentation necessary for coming to agreements about matters of data, method, explanation, and replication of experiments or research projects. These are foundational matters for an academic discipline. To resist them indicates that something else of importance must be driving the energies of the quest for reasons other than academic. Thus it is the case that most reconstructions of the historical Jesus have started with prior assumptions, unexpressed, about the importance of a certain kind of Jesus. With this assumed profile in mind, textual material has then been collected in its support. Thus, in the case of sorting through the sayings of Jesus, the Jesus Seminar used criteria such as the principles of “dissimilarity” and “most difficult reading” on the assumption that sayings coming from Jesus must have been unique, novel, without cultural precedence, and therefore catching, surprising, important, and capable of changing the way people thought (and think!). This means that a certain kind of Jesus was assumed as the measure for distinguishing “authentic” sayings from later attributions. This is clearly circular reasoning, and even if the assumption of Jesus’s novelty were correct in some respect, it would require additional argumentation to support that rationale. Crossan’s criterion of “triple attestation” requires scholarly agreements about being able to delimit three early, completely independent textual traditions, agreements that are simply not present in the current state of New Testament scholarship. And even Crossan has not been careful about applying his rule of three, as for instance in the privilege granted to the parable of the good Samaritan for which there is only one, very late textual tradition (Luke). In the cases of Horsley, Sanders, Fredriksen, and others, the lack of control over the database requirement is even more egregious. If there is no agreement about what texts count and how to turn them into data for historical reconstructions, it means that the quest cannot be thought of as an academic discourse within a scholarly discipline. There are no rules for conducting research in the quest for the historical Jesus; there is no common, agreed-upon basis for debate about theories of memory and mythmaking. Proposals of all types are brought down to the level of personal opinions, explained by brief personal profiles of the scholars involved and left there. **Naturally, those opinions tend to prevail in the popular mind of the guild and the public that are most congenial to the traditional ways of imagining Christian origins.** > > (2) A second criticism is that none of the profiles proposed for the historical Jesus can account for all of the movements, ideologies, and mythic figures of Jesus that dot the early Christian social-scape. We now have the Jesuses of Q1 (a Cynic-like sage), Q2 (a prophet of apocalyptic judgment), Thomas (a gnostic spirit), the parables (a spinner of tales), the pre-Markan sets of pronouncement stories (a lawyer for the defense), the pre-Markan miracles stories (an exorcist and healer), Paul (a martyred messiah and cosmic lord), Mark (the son of God who appeared as messiah, was crucified, and will return as the son of man), John (the reflection of God in creation and history), Matthew (a legislator of divine law), Hebrews (a cosmic high priest presiding over his own death as a sacrifice for sins), Luke (a perfect example of the righteous man), and many more. Not only are these ways of imagining Jesus incompatible with one another, they cannot be accounted for as the embellishments of the memories of a single historical person no matter how influential. Thus the link is missing between the historical Jesus as reconstructed by scholars and the many figures of Jesus imagined and produced by early Christians. Since the quest for the historical Jesus has been pursued in the interest of explaining Christian origins, this missing link is a very serious consideration. **It means, in fact, that the quest has failed.** The object of the quest has purportedly been to remove the fantastic and miraculous features of the Christ myth and gospels from the “real Jesus of history,” but the more important problem for explaining Christian origins is to account for the diversity of mythic claims about him. No reconstruction of the historical Jesus has done or can do that. > > (3) A third criticism is that the link between the teachings of Jesus on the one hand and the story of his crucifixion on the other is missing. None of the scholars that start with the sayings of Jesus has ever been able to account for the crucifixion of Jesus on the basis of those teachings. This means that something is wrong. The teachings and the crucifixion should make sense when put together, but they do not. This is a very serious criticism of the quest. It is also a very serious criticism of the narrative logic of the gospels where the teachings and the crucifixion are in fact interwoven. Only two of the questers for the historical Jesus have dared to tackle this one. Crossan’s study of the “gospel story of the death of Jesus” (_Who Killed Jesus?_, 1995) is a large accumulation of historical and cultural data in the interest of arguing that many details of the crucifixion story, especially those details that suggest Pilate’s innocence on the one hand and the complicity of “the Jews” on the other, are not history but “Christian propaganda.” This looks at first to be a good start toward a recognition of the gospel accounts as mythmaking. But Crossan is not interested in pursuing that question. What interested him were present day hermeneutical issues dealing with Christian anti-Semitism. Thus his study begs the questions of (1) whether the story of the crucifixion was based on fact, and (2) whether the reasons for killing Jesus had anything to do with his activity as a “peasant preacher,” the portrait Crossan had painted earlier in his reconstructions of the historical Jesus. The book is therefore a clever tour de force and a potentially deceitful arrangement of smoke and mirrors. Although it argues against the historical plausibility of detail after detail in the gospel account, the outline of the book follows the gospel story and thus leaves it in place as the narrative account the reader continues to have in mind. The strategy here is similar to that of Crossan’s book about Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994), a book that marks episode after episode of the gospel story as implausible history, yet leaves the gospel outline in place as the way to imagine Jesus’s “biography.” Worse vet for the Who Killed Jesus? book, even the details held to be implausible are sensationalized by re-descriptions taken from the social and cultural histories of the time external to the gospel framework. The “fact” of the crucifixion is left in place as certain even if still in need of explanation (!), and the problem of accounting for the crucifixion is left at the level of the reader’s imagination of a temple incident that, though admittedly implausibly provocative, nevertheless must have triggered the entire crucifixion scenario. Thus the reader is left with the impression that something of the sort must have happened, crucifixion and “resurrection” included, and that it was these events that generated the Christian religion. > > Sanders’s book, referred to above, is more honest in that he struggles valiantly to work out the logics of the various rationales and misunderstandings that “must” have converged in the decisions and behaviors of those who played a role in the event as storied in the gospel account. But neither Sanders, nor Crossan, or any other scholar in quest of the historical Jesus, whether working primarily with the teachings traditions or the narrative logic of the gospels, has been able to connect them in a convincing account. This must mean that the textual data for reconstructing the historical Jesus are inadequate or have been wrongly construed, or that the texts available for a reconstruction of the historical crucifixion are inadequate or wrongly construed. What if both sets of data are inadequate and incompatible because they are the products of early Christian mythmaking? > > (4) A fourth criticism is that the publication of books about the historical Jesus as well as the public discussion of them has assumed a purpose for the quest that is unreasonable and ill-conceived. That purpose has been to rectify and rejuvenate Christian faith and self-understanding. Christians approach the question of Jesus and Christian origins as a seriously definitive enterprise. That is because Christian mentality, especially in its Protestant variety, locates the message, authority, events, and power upon which the Christian churches draw precisely at the moment of origin, and that moment has always been defined by the appearance of Jesus “in human history.” The conventional view is that, by recall and ritual, Christians can strike once more the magic flint that ignited and can reignite the Christian vision and faith. The problem for the historian and for the quester of the historical Jesus is that the Jesus of importance for the Christian faith is the Jesus as portrayed in the gospel story. > > The scholarly approach to Christian origins is critical with respect to the gospel accounts in the New Testament. The quest for the historical Jesus and his teachings is an attempt to reconstruct the “real” Jesus behind the gospels. Scholars have thought of this effort as a requirement for intellectual honesty in the face of the extravagant and mythic features of the gospels, and therefore as a helpful correction or revision of Christian origins. But Christian mythic mentality is not thereby called into question. It functions still in the hope that the true, originary core of the Christian vision or revelation can be found at the beginning in the person of Jesus before the gospels were written. Many new questers, such as Funk and Borg, have expressly stated that they would like their portraits of Jesus to substitute for the gospel picture and thus make it possible for Christians to be followers of Jesus without the entanglements of conventional Christianity. Many are the Christians who have wanted to believe them. The problem is that it was not and is not the historical Jesus whom scholars are able to reconstruct and imagine that created, creates, and sustains the Christianity that made Jesus such an important figure in the first place. It is the Jesus Christ of the gospels, creeds, myths and rituals of the Christian religion that resides in the collective imagination and that influences social and cultural attitudes. As Kenneth Woodward, editor of Newsweek, said in a Reuters news service interview, his concern was that "[The leaders of the historical Jesus movement were] weakening what is remarkable about him. His social teaching is not that remarkable and diluting him into a kind of 1960s revolutionary is not interesting. What is interesting is that he says, `Not my will but thine be done.’ " How is that for putting the Jesus Seminar and company in their places? How is that for the final line on what it was that Jesus said that matters? How is that for the confidence of a major critic and editor in the self-evident truth of the gospel story? It has apparently not dawned on Woodward, or on any major journalist I know of, that the quest for the historical Jesus started with and is rooted in a scholarly consensus about the mythic aspects of the New Testament gospels. But that apparently does not matter. Reading a book about the historical Jesus is not enough to erase the gospel portrait. The gospel portrait continues to be the narrative source for imagining the historical Jesus even when the reconstruction of the historical Jesus is set to challenge the gospel story. If we want to render a cultural critique, it is the relationship of the Christ of the gospel story to the cultures that pattern our social constructions that needs to be addressed. Skirting the narrative gospels to get “back” to the historical Jesus will not work. No reconstruction of the historical Jesus can account for the narrative gospel in the first place, or challenge the narrative gospels and the portrayal of Jesus they present in the popular imagination. The current quest for the historical Jesus does not raise questions about the supposed reasons for the importance of the historical Jesus. It does not raise questions about the effective difference Christianity makes as a social presence and cultural influence in our world. It has not asked what it is about the Christian gospel and religion that is inappropriate, inadequate, troubling, or even dangerous as we face the social and cultural issues of our time. New Testament scholars have not found a way to broach, much less discuss questions such as these in public forum. The quest for the historical Jesus actually avoids these questions. It seeks, on the model of the Protestant reformation, to leapfrog over the “wrongheaded” myths and rituals of the Christian churches to land at the beginning where the pure, clean impulse of an uncontaminated Jesus can rectify and rejuvenate Christian faith. That is mythic thinking with an apron-string attachment to Christian mentality… > > _ **Changing the Focus** _ > > This means that we need to start over with the quest for Christian origins. **And the place to start is with the observation that the New Testament texts are not only inadequate for a Jesus quest, they are data for an entirely different phenomenon. They are not the mistaken and embellished memories of the historical person, but the myths of origin imagined by early Christians seriously engaged in their social experiments. They are data for early Christian mythmaking.** ---
**Author:** ![Othersider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/cab0a1/32.png) [@Othersider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Othersider)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/106 "2006-05-16T02:33:06Z")
> [@LiveOnAPlane](#): > > Many of us are quite aware of scientific methods coupled with God-given intelligence and reasoning, and do believe that faith and reason have to be mutually exclusive. Wait a second…are you suggesting that having _faith_ is not _reason_able? :smack: > [@LiveOnAPlane](#): > > I’m just saying, we’re not all bible-pounding nutters. Or far-out all-condemning wackos, like, say, Shirley Phelps-Roper (a video of her interview on _Hannity and Colmes_ may be found [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G470rfJQCI)). :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/107 "2006-05-16T02:41:04Z")
> [@Ambushed](#): > > First, Paul never knew Jesus or any of the alleged “Apostles” (i.e., the “twelve” that the Gospels speak of). Galatians 2:9: > [@](#): > > And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision. Cephas (Kephas), is certainly Peter of the Twelve and James and John are quite probably the two apostles prominently named as brothers. > [@](#): > > He not only states, he _demands_ that he never learned about any alleged “Jesus” or alleged resurrection or anything else from anyone on earth. He insists that all of his beliefs about Jesus came from visions, which simply cannot be considered genuine evidence, let alone historical evidence. That is not what it says. It says that the message of salvation that he received was directly from God, not that he never heard any further information about Jesus from the other apostles or wider group of disciples. (I have no idea what you intend by ‘alleged “Jesus”’. Paul is quite clearly talking about a person whom he believes (from whatever source) to have been the man Jesus who was executed by crucifixion and (whom he believes) arose from the dead. This is hardly scientific proof that such a person as Jesus lived, but you push beyond the available evidence when you claim that Paul believed that his only source of all information was based on visions. Given that Paul certainly knew some of the twelve (at least to argue with), it is unlikely that he never heard any stories from them. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/108 "2006-05-16T02:51:28Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > Having said all that, most historians and NT scholars do still believe that Jesus was a real historical person. However, you’ll find very few who will tell you that there is any substantiation for the supernatural claims associated with him. It is, of course, true that most historians and NT scholars do believe that Jesus was a historical person. However, as you can see in my reply to **Lissa** above (post [105](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7397438&postcount=105)), Burton Mack (among many others, though they are in the minority) compellingly argues that there are inadequate grounds for such a belief. And I’m well aware that you realize that sheer numbers mean nothing whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/109 "2006-05-16T03:09:49Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > Josephus seems to mention James as a brother of Jesus… The specific phrase in question is widely considered to be a Christian interpolation; a forgery (just like the other passage in Josephus). This, according to Peter Kirby and G.A. Wells at least, is the view of many scholars, including Schurer, Zahn, von Dobschutz, Juster, Karl Kautsky, S.G.F. Brandon, Charles Guignebert, and Twelftree. > [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > … and Paul talks about meeting Peter, James and John (who he calls the “Pillars” of Jerusalem). I have seen no reliable evidence at all that these people Paul speaks of were among the alleged original “twelve” of the Gospels rather than early Christians who happened to have some of the same names. Could you provide persuasive evidence of your statement? ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/110 "2006-05-16T03:13:56Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > Perhaps, but here we’re not relying on the testimony of potentially false prophets. We’re discussing the actions of people who were actually in a position to know whether or not a particular primary claim was true or not. > > I’m not arguing that there’s proof the apostles were telling the truth necessarily. But they either saw the risen Christ or they didn’t.But, again, the early Christians who were not in a position to “know” could well have deluded themselves into believing something. Not so the apostles. They were lying (or not).Well, again, regarding the apostles there’s no other conclusion (assuming we accept their existence and the reported beliefs). But we cannot accept that based on anything other than blind faith, since there is absolutely no reliable evidence that these people actually witnessed anything or even that they actually existed. All we have is an unreliable text that cannot be considered evidence of itself. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/111 "2006-05-16T03:45:49Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > The specific phrase in question is widely considered to be a Christian interpolation; a forgery (just like the other passage in Josephus). This, according to Peter Kirby and G.A. Wells at least, is the view of many scholars, including Schurer, Zahn, von Dobschutz, Juster, Karl Kautsky, S.G.F. Brandon, Charles Guignebert, and Twelftree. It’s not true that it’s “widely” considered an interpolation. I noted above that its authenticity is disputed but those dissenters are still a minority. You’ll also notice that I said Josephus _seems_ to mention James as a brother of Jesus. I was answering a question about evidence for the existence of (at least some of) the apostles. I was citing the evidence (meagre as it is). I’m not particularly trying to argue for the authenticity of the James passage (I’m doubtful about “called Christ” myself), but its still, by and large accepted by the mainstream, and, unlike the TF, it has an early attestation by Origen. > [@](#): > > I have seen no reliable evidence at all that these people Paul speaks of were among the alleged original “twelve” of the Gospels rather than early Christians who happened to have some of the same names. Could you provide persuasive evidence of your statement? I’m sure I never said anything about “the twelve.” I was answering the question about “apostles.” Paul said that Jesus “appeared” to Cephas and James and he called them “apostles.” I also said that Paul’s letters do not make it clear how he perceived their relationship to Jesus. Whether they were part of a larger “Twelve” is not something I am attempting to argue, but Paul does offer primary evidence that people by the names of Cephas/Peter, James and John were early leaders of a Jesus movement in Jerusalem. He calls them apostles and he calls James “the Lord’s brother.” Make of it what you will. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/112 "2006-05-16T03:57:20Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > **Ambushed** , I think **JThunder** is falling short of establishing his point, but you are falling off the cart on the other side. With respect, while I will accept a mild hit, that too seems to be something of an exaggeration. > [@tomndebb](#): > > It did not take very much of a web search to discover that Greenleaf was a very much respected author on the rules of evidence. Using the silly site in which his remarks are linked only demonstrates that some Christian apologists are credulous, not that Greenleaf had poor skills. Given that Greenleaf wrote prior to the discoveries of Tischendorf and some of the other events that accelerated the the re-evaluation of the gospels as history, Greenleaf’s analysis suffers from accepting too casually the veracity of the gospels, but given that (fatal) flaw, his analysis is not characterized by shoddy logic–that tends to be the province of the people who quote him. You’re right that I probably should have researched him myself, but wasn’t that **JThunder** ’s job? Especially considering that I explicitly asked him for better evidence? And even though Greenleaf authored a respected text on legal evidence, is their much of a foundation for **JThunder** ’s wildly exorbitant praise? > [@tomndebb](#): > > Your claims against Eusebius may or may not have some basis in fact. However, your claims would have been stronger had you shown that Tertullian, Cyprian, and Irenaeus actually knew the Josephus text. Obviously I cannot know (and I do not have evidence for) what any of them was actually aware of, but it is very highly probable that if the Josephus passages that Eusebius gives us were extant – especially in their interpolated if not out-and-out fabricated state – at _least_ one of these men would have known about it. Josephus was too important a source for it to be likely that all of them would remain ignorant of his work (although, of course, this is still possible). > [@tomndebb](#): > > If Eusebius is the first to quote the tampered verses, I suppose that it is possible that he inserted them, but it is also possible that he was the first to encounter a modified manuscript. Yes, the latter is certainly possible. However, I still think the likelihood that they are his invention is greater based on the fact that he is – suspiciously, I believe – the first to have learned of them. As a previous poster has pointed out, Eusebius was certainly not above deception. > [@tomndebb](#): > > Eusebius lived over 100 years later than Irenaeus and Tertullian, 150 years later than Justin, plenty of time for a spurious insertion by another hand. And plenty of time for these other writers to have learned of Josephus work even if the passages in question only barely mentioned any Jesus the Christ or the Gallilean, let alone if they were in the state Eusebius gave us. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/113 "2006-05-16T04:05:42Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > So what? I have not put forth that the gospels are accurate of anything. I was addressing whether a statement may be considered evidence. And I was addressing whether a statement found only in a dubious text with no independent evidence may be itself considered evidence of anything. And I still strongly contend that it **cannot**. My point is entirely relevant. Your statement implicitly assumes that the record of a given testimony is reliable, and one simply cannot assume that with a 2000 year old religious sales manual. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/114 "2006-05-16T04:37:48Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > So you cite Galatians 1 as your authority that Paul had no knowledge of Jesus’s earthly existence or resurrection, but a purely visionary experience, and yet you deny that Paul knew any of the Apostles, in spite of his claim that he did indeed meet with Peter/Cephas in that very same passage (v 18)? I have seen no reliable (certainly not independent) evidence that the “Peter/Cephas” to whom Paul refers was the “Peter/Cephas” of the Gospels. If you could provide such, I would be most happy to examine it. You would be the first in my experience to be able to do so. True, in Gal 1:19 Paul speaks of Peter being an Apostle, but you must not forget that Paul strongly insisted that **he** , Paul, was also an Apostle. So Paul obviously does not consider the word “Apostle” to be defined (at least exclusively) as one of the original Twelve of the Gospels. > [@FriarTed](#): > > Paul did not “ **explicitly repudiated** the idea that he had earthly evidence of Jesus’ existence” - he only stated that he did not receive his teaching in the Gospel from anyone but the Risen Christ. Not that he had no knowledge of a historical Jesus. That is at _best_ a matter of personal opinion. Paul never provides a historical context for Jesus’ life, which is virtually impossible to accept if Paul thought Jesus was a historical figure. As I wrote earlier, he did not even seem to know where or when Jesus even lived! If Paul is read without Gospel-colored glasses, it is very easy to accept that Paul’s Jesus was not historical at all but rather the supernatural-only Christ of his “visions”. His seeming (but absolutely minimal) references to normal, historical humanity (such as his “born of a woman”, etc.) may at least arguably be better understood as referring to a supernatural-only being who, while he “descended from heaven” did not descend completely out of the heavenly sphere unto Earth but rather only to the lowest level of heaven where earthly activities and norms are merely “mirrored”. This latter view is persuasively argued by Earl Doherty in his scholarly work, _The Jesus Puzzle_ ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/115 "2006-05-16T05:34:10Z")
> [@Ambushed](#): > > Burton Mack (among many others, though they are in the minority) compellingly argues that there are inadequate grounds for such a belief. I don’t see any compelling argument that Jesus was completely imaginary. I certainly see ample evidence that the Gospels cannot be used as a historical witness outside Christian mythology. However, it would seem to me that it is much more plausible that a Jewish preacher named Y[sup]e[/sup]shua existed and was the person identified by the earliest adherents of what became Christianity than that some wholly unknown individual made up an entire religion out of whole cloth based on a non-existent person. Wholly imaginary creations tend to be presented like Seth or Thetans with a clearly identified “mediator” such as Jane Roberts or L. Ron Hubbard. The closest analog to that scenario might be Paul, but Paul was clearly in conflict with others who shared a mixture of shared and differing views regarding either Jesus or the new religion. Had Paul launched the religion based on an imaginary person, he should have been able to control the beliefs and direction of the new religion by simple claims of authority and not have to run around the Eastern Mediterranean stomping out heresies or arguing with other elders of the religion. It is one thing to say that we will never discover the historical Jesus. It is something different (and far less plausible) to say that there never was any such person. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/116 "2006-05-16T06:05:57Z")
**Ambushed** , I think you’re misunderstanding Burton Mack just a little (which is easy to do, he can be quite coy about committing himself to a position on a Historical Jesus). Mack is not a mythicist in the vein of Doherty or Wells and he has said that he believes that some kind of historical “founder-teacher” was at the root of the earliest Jesus movements (see _Who Wrote the New Testament?_ pg. 46). What he _does_ say is that he does not believe this figure is recoverable from the “mythicized” character of the Gospels. When calls the Jesus Seminar a “failed quest.” he’s talking about their effort to locate and define what is historical about Jesus from what is myth. His position is not that Jesus did not exist (in fact, he believes it was necessary for the pre-Pauline movement), his position is that it is impossible to know anything _about_ him and that the endeavors of scholars like Crossan, Meiers and Brown to extricate him from his mythos are fool’s errands, doomed to failure. He doesn’t think they’re looking for someone who doesn’t exist, he thinks they’re looking for someone who can no longer be found and that it’s a waste of time to try. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/117 "2006-05-16T08:25:24Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > It’s not true that it’s “widely” considered an interpolation. I noted above that its authenticity is disputed but those dissenters are still a minority. You’ll also notice that I said Josephus _seems_ to mention James as a brother of Jesus. I was answering a question about evidence for the existence of (at least some of) the apostles. I was citing the evidence (meagre as it is). I’m not particularly trying to argue for the authenticity of the James passage (I’m doubtful about “called Christ” myself), but its still, by and large accepted by the mainstream, and, unlike the TF, it has an early attestation by Origen. > > I’m sure I never said anything about “the twelve.” I was answering the question about “apostles.” Paul said that Jesus “appeared” to Cephas and James and he called them “apostles.” I also said that Paul’s letters do not make it clear how he perceived their relationship to Jesus. Whether they were part of a larger “Twelve” is not something I am attempting to argue, but Paul does offer primary evidence that people by the names of Cephas/Peter, James and John were early leaders of a Jesus movement in Jerusalem. He calls them apostles and he calls James “the Lord’s brother.” Make of it what you will. I thank you for your clarifications and I apologize for seeming to suggest that you did not qualify your statements. I intended no such implication but agree that my words seem to imply that. In truth, I was merely speaking for the open record and certainly not impugning your clearly considerable knowledge in this area. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/118 "2006-05-16T09:11:44Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I don’t see any compelling argument that Jesus was completely imaginary. **But that’s neither my intent nor is it in the least my burden of proof!** Rather, it is the believer’s full burden of proof to establish through reliable, multiple, independent, credible sources that Jesus was NOT a mythical construction! I am _not_ and _cannot_ provide evidence nor compelling argument for the non-existence of something or someone, as I am certain you must be fully aware. Fortunately, that is in no way my responsibility. Furthermore, I don’t know what you mean by the phrase you used. My view is not that Jesus was “_completely_ imaginary”, but as I wrote above: > [@](#): > > By far the most likely explanation (grossly simplified) is that the Apostles and Jesus never historically existed and that the Gospels were written by people who wished to create a faith-inducing narrative that combined in a chronological and easy-to-understand manner the many divergent stories they had heard (and believed, though unjustifiably) about what they didn’t realize was actually a mythological (in its sociological sense) figure created by their forbears and neighbors. This mythological figure was a composite of the stories and words of various itinerant teachers (the area was full to overflowing with them) such as the Stoics [or Cynics] combined with a huge number of elements borrowed almost directly from Jewish Scripture. So in your opinion is a singular mythological, non-historical figure given by his inventors the name of Yeshua created as a composite of actual historical (if unknown) figures who bore little relationship to the New Testament Jesus (one of whom may or may not have been named Yeshua) “_completely_ imaginary” or not? That’s entirely up to you, as I make no claim that Jesus was imaginary. My claim is that since there is absolutely no reliable, independent evidence for the historical existence of anyone relatively similar to the New Testament’s Jesus, there is absolutely no justified grounds for believing in such a historical personage. And believing something which has no justification is foolish. > [@tomndebb](#): > > I certainly see ample evidence that the Gospels cannot be used as a historical witness outside Christian mythology. However, it would seem to me that it is much more plausible that a Jewish preacher named Y[sup]e[/sup]shua existed and was the person identified by the earliest adherents of what became Christianity than that some wholly unknown individual made up an entire religion out of whole cloth based on a non-existent person. You have no foundation for that view. Furthermore, the considerable quantity of incredible material and manifest invention surrounding the NT Jesus not only means that there are no grounds for believing in a historical Jesus behind the NT, but further that one must bring considerable doubt and skepticism to the question as well. > [@tomndebb](#): > > It is one thing to say that we will never discover the historical Jesus. It is something different (and far less plausible) to say that there never was any such person. You can only believe that this is implausible if you already believe in the historicity of someone like the NT Jesus, which as I’ve shown is totally unjustified. You have to show strong, independent evidence that there indeed was a historical person behind the NT mythology to justify such a logically inverted statement. No, given the propagandistic, faith-selling contents of the New Testament, it is actually tremendously implausible that a historical Jesus ever existed. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/119 "2006-05-16T10:03:44Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > **Ambushed** , I think you’re misunderstanding Burton Mack just a little (which is easy to do, he can be quite coy about committing himself to a position on a Historical Jesus). Mack is not a mythicist in the vein of Doherty or Wells and he has said that he believes that some kind of historical “founder-teacher” was at the root of the earliest Jesus movements (see _Who Wrote the New Testament?_ pg. 46). Let me start off by saying I didn’t express myself particularly clearly in that post. It seems as if I were trying to establish that Mack flatly denied the historicity of Jesus, but I should have made it plainer that what I was trying to do was indicate that Mack argued that no one had credibly succeeded in reliably establishing his historicity, due primarily to the four criticisms of the entire field he laid out. Now, you probably don’t quite agree with this view either, but given Mack’s slight but non-trivial ambiguity, I’m not sure we can decide who’s view is closer to Mack’s intent. I have a slightly different take on page 46. He writes (starting at the bottom of p 45): > [@](#): > > But what, then, about the historical Jesus? Should not a book about Christian origins and the New Testament start with a chapter on the historical Jesus? The answer is no. It is _neither possible_ nor necessary to say very much about the historical Jesus. Now, given that Mack used the phrase “historical Jesus” three times and also wrote “very much” here instead of “anything” gives the impression that Mack seems to minimally accept the idea of Jesus’ historicity. But surely you will admit that this is not much to hang your hat on. More to the point, I hold that the lengthy excerpt I posted previously from that work denies that there has as yet been any successful establishment of the existence of a historical Jesus. So page 45-46, in my view, can arguably be better seen as casual, off-hand references that he had no intention to be taken very seriously. I don’t think there’s nearly enough there to justify a conclusion. > [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > What he _does_ say is that he does not believe this figure is recoverable from the “mythicized” character of the Gospels. When calls the Jesus Seminar a “failed quest.” he’s talking about their effort to locate and define what is historical about Jesus from what is myth. Here I must disagree more strongly on a particular point. He did not say that it was merely the Jesus Seminar that was a “failed quest”, he said that what had failed altogether is the entire quest for the historical Jesus, by _anyone_. This I take to be equivalent to stating that no one has ever established the existence of a historical Jesus. This is precisely what I believe. I make no flat assertions that Jesus was a mythological figure, I merely offer that as a compelling alternative hypothesis to explain the New Testament. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594/120 "2006-05-16T11:19:56Z")
The evidence of a Risen person from the dead going back 2,000 years can only be taken on faith;faith in the writers, and faith in the person telling the story. One must consider the fact that there was no News papers, Radio, TV.Telephones,or Computers, news traveled very slowly,and people learned things after the fact,sometimes long after. I lived for many years on a farm without electricity,or phone. I know how long it took for news of the 2d world war to get to us,which was by newspaper.That was on Sunday. Traveling to a town 50 miles away was a day’s trip. So one can imagine how long it took for word to spread.also not knowing about a coma, or being knocked unconscious,then waking up must have been to some as a resurrection;also taking in to consideration of how different people see things and retell the event is a matter of whom to believe. It doesn’t mean they were liars or ignorant. There are people nowdays who say they saw flying saucers etc. it doesn’t mean they are lying,but they very well may not be believable.There are some who will believe them and some who will not. That is how human nature is and could not have changed thast much in the past 2,000 plus years. Monavis [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-for-the-resurrection/356594.md?page=7)